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The David Crompton letters: What they tell us

The David Crompton letters: What they tell us

South Yorkshire Police’s suspended chief constable is taking his boss to court after being told to step down in the aftermath of the damning Hillsborough inquest conclusions. Documents now released to the public have laid bare how their relationship broke down.

As families were digesting the news they had spent 27 years fighting for, the chief constable of the police force which had caused the crush on the terraces alluded to “other contributory factors” to blame for the deaths of 96 football fans.

It was an act of “unacceptable insensitivity” to victims of the disaster from David Crompton, according to South Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Alan Billings – and convinced him to ask for his chief’s resignation.

Letters between the two detail the events that unfolded in the immediate aftermath of the inquests in April 2016.

They paint a picture of a power struggle that played out at the heart of the country’s most embattled police force.

A force that while led by Mr Crompton faced continuing accusations it covered up the events of Britain’s worst football disaster and ignored widespread sexual abuse of children in Rotherham.

AS SOUTH Yorkshire’s suspended chief constable David Crompton refuses to accede to calls from his force’s crime commissioner Dr Alan Billings to formally resign his position over his mishandling of the fallout from the Hillsborough inquests, three points need to be re-enforced.

First, police chiefs still appear to be in denial about the scale of this 27-year miscarriage of justice, and its impact on the family and friends of the 96 football fans crushed to death at the 1989 FA Cup semi-final.

4 thoughts on “The David Crompton letters: What they tell us”

1) It is clear that Crompton is still in denial about the police performance at Hillsborough. [It doesn’t matter whether I or other readers might have different perspectives on events that day, but everyone needs to take seriously the findings of the Inquests, having heard all the evidence.] In that case, it is difficult to believe that any other victims – as in Child Sexual Abuse or at Orgreave or.. – could ever have any confidence in the leadership of South Yorkshire Police;
2) It appears that Sir Tom Winsor was not told the truth by Crompton about the final events, and Winsor has now left himself open to criticism.
3) The Peer Reviews show that SYP was getting worse, not better, under Crompton’s leadership. The problem for Winsor is that the Inspectorate’s reports were not saying this, and it was the reviews commissioned by Billings and the new Acting Chief Constable which have uncovered the reality.

Crompton clearly doesn’t get it. It’s disgraceful that he is now determined to go to Judicial Review.